Since there was no gig upstairs prior to Saturday night’s Transformation indie night at The Zodiac, there’s a brief warm-up set for the early crowd from The Metros. Due to play a half-hour slot from 11:30, things don’t start off too well with the band being 20 minutes late getting onstage, but at least by then significantly more people have drifted in from the nearby pubs and bars.

The flyer shows the band looking moody in front of some city tower blocks. One of them is drinking something out of a can. I wouldn’t have thought bands could have grown up listening to Hard-Fi, Libertines, Artic Monkeys and The Ordinary Boys yet – they seem too recent to have been formative influences – but then again even though the frontman is both drinking and smoking on stage none of the band look older than about 15. Or maybe they’re just jumping on the bandwagon of a trendy scene.

In fairness to them, the band is musically very competent. Some classics rock’n’roll riffs and catchy basslines suggest they’ve been pilfering from either their parents’ record collection or recycling what they’ve heard elsewhere. Nonetheless as the set goes on, with tales of trouble with the law (‘Missing In Action’), nights out on a tenner and ASBOs, I come to realise I hate everything this band stand for.

The reason people drink themselves into oblivion on Friday nights is surely to escape the meaningless humdrum of their mundane lives. I wouldn’t want to read a book or see a film about such a boring existence, so why should I listen to half an hour of ‘I went out, I got drunk’? I’m not against rock’n’roll being fun, but it should be theatrical or escapist – the binge-drinking lager culture is not something to celebrate.

As distasteful as I find it, I can’t deny that it is rather ‘now’, and a few kids seem to be enjoying it. Nonetheless, while I wouldn’t particularly fault The Metros personally, I feel they’re copycats in a scene that I hope has already run its course.
(2/5)